Public transit – particularly light rail – is a very safe and efficient way to
travel – certainly, one of the safest modes of urban transportation, and
far safer than the automobile.

Incredibly, some roadway zealots and spokesmen for roadway industry
interests claim that, even with more than 40,000 officially recorded street
and highway deaths annually in the USA, the private automobile is
somehow safer than mass transit. This fantasy immediately evaporates
with any reasonable look at solid statistics, such as the data in the table
and graph below for 1997 (the most recent year for which fatality data for
all surface modes could be compiled). As these data show, the facts are
indeed in line with common sense – public transit is considerably safer
than travel by automobile, and light rail transit (LRT) is one of the safest modes of all.